As U.S.-China relations remain tense and the war in Ukraine drags on, officials warn that both the China and Russia are rapidly increasing the number of their intelligence agents in Mexico, with the possible goal of causing disruptions in the United States.
“In recent months, a Chinese spy balloon crossed the U.S., a CCP [Chinese Communist Party] military ship confronted a U.S. military ship in the Taiwan Strait, Micron was banned in China and American companies were raided, and CCP espionage efforts in Cuba are increasing,” U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times. “Additionally, Russia downed a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea, harassed American fighter jets in the Middle East, and detained an American journalist on baseless charges.”
“Now, both the CCP and Russia are expanding their spy networks in Mexico, Russia’s largest in the world, to pursue their harmful goals in our hemisphere. This escalation of aggressive behavior cannot be tolerated. The Biden administration must act instead of engaging in fruitless talks with China and compromising America’s interests,” he said.
It’s unclear exactly why the CCP and Russia are expanding their intelligence networks south of the border, but prior statements from the U.S. military indicate that the intention may be to sow discord in Mexico to make it easier for bad actors to harm the United States.
“My concern with that is the instability it creates, the opportunity it creates, for actors such as China, Russia, and others who might have nefarious activities on their mind to seek access and influence in our AOR [area of responsiblity] from a national security perspective,” said Air Force general Glen VanHerck, commander of the United States Northern Command, during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services in 2022.
Gen. VanHerck went on to say that “the largest portion of GRU [Russian intelligence] members in the world is in Mexico right now.”
Experts in the field of counterintelligence and border security believe that the expansion of CCP spies in Mexico should be ringing alarm bells for the White House over national security.
“My instinct is it has to do with several things, counterintelligence operations in America or close to America. They may have an army of Chinese nationals established in Mexico, so they can coordinate fentanyl operations with the cartels,” Derek Maltz, a former special agent in charge at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told The Epoch Times. “We already know that the Chinese national money brokers are sitting in Mexico with the cartel leaders organizing all the money pick-up operations in America. So there may be a variety of jobs that they’re doing [to establish] a stronger base in the western hemisphere, right in Mexico, right south of the border.”
Mr. Maltz, who recently testified before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, went on to state that he believes the CCP is sending their intelligence operatives into the United States across the Mexican border.
Fentanyl
One of the main concerns of the CCP’s increased intelligence operations in Mexico has to do with the partnership between Chinese brokers and Mexican drug cartels to traffick fentanyl into the United States, oftentimes by sending couriers across the border illegally.“We don’t know who they are, where they are, what they’re doing. But what we do know is that the Chinese and their role with international drug trafficking and money laundering, laundering has exploded and is evolving,” said Maltz. “They started a bombing campaign on this country with synthetic drugs in my view, because I ran the Special Operations Division [for the DEA]. and I lived this in 2008, they started with K2, spice, and bath salts and they were bombing America and people were getting really sick—all kinds of, you know, psychiatric reactions, hospital emergency room admissions. Then in 2012, they went to fentanyl and then we started seeing the death rates exploding over time. They turned over the dirty business of fentanyl distribution to the Mexican cartels.”
Mr. Maltz says that Chinese actors are now sourcing a drug known as xylazine or “tranq,” which is a horse sedative, to Mexican drug cartels that they then mix with fentanyl to produce a more powerful effect.
The DEA recently warned the American public of a sharp increase in the trafficking of the deadly mixture, which can result in necrosis—the rotting of human tissue—that may lead to amputation, and cannot be reversed by taking naloxone (Narcan) once injected because xylazine is not an opioid.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” said DEA administrator Anne Milgram. “The DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022, approximately 23 percent of fentanyl powder and 7 percent of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 107,735 Americans died between August 2021 and August 2022 from drug poisonings, with 66 percent of those deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl. The Sinaloa cartel and Jalisco cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for the vast majority of the fentanyl that is being trafficked in communities across the United States.
CCP Cells Infiltrate Foreign Companies
The alarming news of CCP activity south of the border comes a week after FBI director Christopher Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee that China presents an unparalleled threat to Western democracy.“There is no country, none, that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to our ideas our innovation our economic security than the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,” Wray testified last week.
During Wray’s testimony, he also warned about the growing trend of the CCP requiring U.S. and other foreign-owned companies in China to host groups that monitor their compliance with Chinese Community Party rules and regulations.
Wray stated it was one way the CCP has begun to “exploit” joint business ventures to obtain company secrets and information.
“While there’s no law against joint ventures, the problem that we have is that the Chinese government all too often has exploited those joint ventures to then use them as ways to get improper access to company’s secrets, and information,” he said.
The FBI director went on to state that any American would be “shocked” to learn the degree to which foreign and U.S. companies in China are being forced to allow CCP cells into their organizations to monitor operations.
“Really, any company of any size in China is required by Chinese law to have what they quaintly call a committee, which is essentially a cell inside a company whose sole function is to ensure that company’s compliance with Chinese Communist Party orthodoxy,” said Wray. “If we tried to install something like that in American companies, or if the British tried to do it in British companies or any number of other places, people would go out of their minds, and rightly so.”
